Month: April 2023

Read: Jeremiah 31:1-6; John 20:1-18

It’s beginning to look a lot like Easter! School children are coloring pictures of Jesus hanging on the cross. Shop owners have lights in their windows and scenes from Calvary set up. In the malls and supermarkets, we hear all the songs of the season – “O Sacred Head, Now Wounded” (what do you think of the Chipmunks version?) – and car dealers have those great Empty-tomb sized discounts on the new 2023 models!

Yes, it’s beginning to look a lot like Easter. Or is it? We don’t make the same big deal of Holy Week that we do of Advent and Christmas. No one wishes us a holly jolly Easter or throws an office Good Friday party.

A Jewish man, named Mitch, wrote this note to his Christian friend:

Looking at the Christmas thing as a man raised in a Jewish home, the big celebration in Christianity should be Easter. No Easter, no Christianity. So all the focus on Christmas, at least to me, seems misdirected.

Why Christians don’t whoop it up more at Easter is a mystery to me. How inspirational! How joyful! That is the time to toast each other, lay on gifts, attend worship services, pack in the rich food. Something really substantial and holy to remember.

No Easter, no Christianity. Mitch has a point! If Jesus doesn’t rise from the dead, where he was born makes no difference. No cross and resurrection, no celebration of Jesus’ birth.

Sometimes we say, “Christmas is for children.” That may be, but shouldn’t Easter be even more so? Yes, the weight of sin and the weariness of life may not be things our children are thinking about, but what hope we give them when they learn that in the midst of life’s difficulties and our inability to be good enough, Jesus has triumphed. He has conquered death. He has made a way. Jesus is present to us today in ways we cannot understand or explain. In him, we find life that is full and meaningful and vibrant and without end. He is life itself!

In the fourth century, John Chrysostom wrote a sermon that is still quoted in Orthodox churches around the world for Easter. It’s called “O Death, Where is Your Sting? O Hell, Where is Your Victory?” In it he wrote:

Christ is risen, and you are overthrown.

Christ is risen, and the demons are fallen.

Christ is risen, and the angels rejoice.

Christ is risen, and life reigns.

Lent and Easter may seem boring to children. Other than a chocolate bunny or a colorful egg, this isn’t the silliness and celebratory season Advent and Christmas offer. There isn’t the anticipation of what gifts might be found under the tree.

Yet Easter contains the one thing that every man, woman, and child needs most… Resurrection.

Jesus said in John 5, ²⁴ Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life. ²⁵ “Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.

Easter changes everything. It is the single most important event in human history. It is the place where God, once and for all, made a way for us to be restored to all he intended for us. It is a place of hope; a place of life; a place of unconditional love.

For reflection:

• Think about how you celebrate Easter and Christmas. How can we “whoop it up” more at Easter? Should we?
• What would it look like to live your life in light of the resurrection more than you do now?

* This devotional was adapted from one written by Frederica Matthews-Green.

Read: Isaiah 52:13-53:12; John 18:1-19:42

I’m an optimistic person. I usually can find a silver lining in even the worst of situations. It isn’t hard for me to see hard times as opportunities and to believe that God truly does work all things for our good (Romans 8:28).

As a result, I tend to want to skip Lent and Good Friday and simply focus on the resurrection. Yes, Jesus suffered, and I will too since I’m his follower. Yes, Jesus died on the cross, and I too must take up my cross and follow him. But the resurrection! That changes everything! Right?

It absolutely does. Yet, there is no “Christ is risen” without first “Christ has died.” The horror of Good Friday is part of what makes the empty tomb so glorious. Jesus faced death and conquered it. Jesus didn’t shy away from the cross. He asked that the cup be taken from him in the garden, yet did God’s will when the answer was, “No.”

Jesus chose the cross. He willingly took our place enduring the mocking, the beating, the scorn, the pain, the humiliation, and the suffering. Hebrews tells us that, “for the joy that was set before him [he] endured the cross, despising the shame (Hebrews 12:2).

Jesus chose the cross out of obedience to the Father. He chose it out of love for you and me. He chose it to make a way for broken, sinful people to be restored to the life they’d been designed for. He died so we wouldn’t have to…so we could be with him for all eternity.

As I reflect on the cross and Jesus’ willingness to endure it for my sake, I think also of his call to his followers in Matthew 16, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. ²⁵ For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. ²⁶ For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul? 

I am called to take up my cross and die; to lose my life for Jesus’ sake. In dying, I live. In surrender and submission to God’s will and God’s way, I find freedom. Though I may suffer in this life – suffer because this is a fallen world filled with sickness and the consequences of sinful choices (mine and others) or suffer because I’ve chosen to follow Jesus and such a life is not popular in a world given to self – I have the hope that my suffering is not in vain. It’s a part of the process of being made into Christ’s image. It’s part of the process of God developing in me perseverance and holiness.

And so, though my flesh wants to fast forward to the empty tomb and the joy of resurrection, I pause at Calvary. I take time to remember “what is the breadth and length and height and depth, ¹⁹ and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that [I] may be filled with all the fullness of God (Ephesians 3:18b-19). I remember John’s words that God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. ¹⁷ For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. I remember these things and I pause to give thanks; to look back on the season of Lent and all the ways God has met me in my reflection and “suffering”; to give thanks for the ways he has realigned my heart and filled me with hope; and for the truth that it’s Friday, but Sunday’s coming!

For reflection:

• If you’ve taken time during Lent to enter into Christ’s suffering through giving something up, reflect on how that you’ve experienced that. Has it been “suffering”? Has it been easy? What are lessons you’ve learned in the process? How has Jesus met you?
• Jesus most profoundly demonstrates his incredibly love for us in dying the death we deserved. What are ways you’ve experienced his love during Lent? How does the cross communicate love to you?

Where has God “realigned” your heart this Lenten season? Give thanks for his gracious work in your life.

Read: Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29; Matthew 21:1-11

Søren Kierkegaard once wrote that Jesus consistently called people to follow him, but never asked people to admire him. He called people to discipleship, not admiration for his teaching or fans of his philosophy. He wanted disciples. Followers. People who would become his apprentices and learn from him; imitate him; follow him.

On Palm Sunday, Jesus came into Jerusalem. Some of the crowd spread their cloaks on the road and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. People ran before him and others came behind. They shouted, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!”

Most of those in the crowd were admirers; they were fans. They liked what Jesus taught, perhaps even claimed to believe it, but in their actions their lives weren’t impacted. They didn’t try to live like him. They heard this great teaching, they saw his miracles and healings, they heard his calls and commands and… they ignored them.

Jesus came into the world to save it, not merely to instruct it. He came to live the life each of us should have lived and he understood God’s heart and desire for us. He taught the way of God, not human tradition. He showed us what a life lived well looked like. He faced all the temptations and challenges we face in life and he never sinned. He walked in intimacy with the Father and in the power of the Holy Spirit.

Peter wrote in his first letter, ²¹ For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps. He is our example, the pattern, we should follow.

A follower wants to be as much like the one it admires as possible. In 1991, Gatorade released a commercial featuring Michael Jordan. As Michael was shown playing in the NBA, practicing with his teammates and with kids on a schoolyard, we heard, “Sometimes I dream, that he is me. You’ve got to see that’s how I dream to be. I dream I move; I dream I groove. Like Mike, if I could be like Mike.” Of course, in the midst of all the video of Michael playing, we see him drinking Gatorade. The impression is, if we’ll drink what Michael drinks, we can be like him!

Interspersed in the scenes of Michael were scenes of people – especially kids – trying to do the things Michael Jordan did. They were doing their best to imitate him. They, in some small sense, were followers, though what they aspired to was a bit out of reach!

An admirer, on the other hand, stays detached. He admires from a distance. He fails to see that what the person is doing is something he can or should do. A lot of us who watched that Gatorade commercial were admirers. We loved watching Michael. We loved seeing the incredible things he could do, We would have loved to have been able to do them. But we didn’t even try. There was only one Michael. We’ll root for (or against) him, but we aren’t going to try to be him.

Jesus made it clear he was uninterested in admirers. On the night he was betrayed, as his disciples gathered to celebrate the Passover, he did something unthinkable. He washed their feet. Even Judas’ feet. And when he finished, he said to them: “You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, for so I am. ¹⁴ If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. ¹⁵ For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you. ¹⁶ Truly, truly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. ¹⁷ If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them. “

An admirer would see Jesus’ actions and say, “That’s so cool! I love that guy!” A follower would say, “That’s so cool! I want to be like that guy!” Jesus said the ones who do what he did are the ones who are blessed. It isn’t enough to admire him or to cheer him on. He wants us to do what he did. He wants us to follow.

On that Palm Sunday some two thousand years ago, outwardly, the people responded rightly. They rejoiced. They praised. They honored their king.

Their actions as the week wore on betrayed their hearts. They were nothing more than admirers and when Jesus did not meet their expectations, they joined the masses yelling, “Crucify!” As Jesus looks over Jerusalem and weeps in Luke 19, he writes, ⁴¹ And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, ⁴² saying, “Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes.” They admire him, but do not believe. They do not follow. They missed the blessing God wanted to give them.

For reflection:

• As you think about your Christian experience, are you a follower or an admirer? Are you all in, doing the things Jesus did? Or are you watching from a distance, keeping him at arm’s length?
• Take a moment to think about the things Jesus did in his life – prayer, Scripture reading, time in silence and solitude, witness, teaching, etc. Which do you do now? Which do you sense him inviting you to start?

Read this week:

April 3: Isaiah 42:1-9; John 12:1-11

April 4: Isaiah 49:1-7; John 12:20-36

April 5: Isaiah 50:4-9a; John 13:21-32

April 6: Exodus 12:1-14; John 13:1-17, 31b-35

April 7: Isaiah 52:13-53:12; John 18:1-19:42

April 8: Lamentations 3:1-9, 19-24; John 19:38-42

April 9: Jeremiah 31:1-6; John 20:1-18